Rebecca's Tale

by Sally Beauman

  I had to carry him—and there was no difficulty in that. He’s a tall man (he stoops now, but would once have been my own height), and in the old photographs Ellie has shown me I can see that he was once strongly built; he’s now painfully thin—he layers himself in tweeds, so I’d never realized exactly how thin, until I lifted him. He’s a man of formidable presence and formidable will, but he is pitifully frail. I could lift him as easily as a grown child or a woman.

  We managed to get him back to the car, and into the rear seat; I sat beside him, still afraid he might die before we could get him back to The Pines—and Ellie wouldn’t hear of taking him anywhere else. The nearest hospital is even farther away than Kerrith, but that wasn’t the reason: “I’m taking him home,” she said. “That’s where he’ll want to be, and that’s where I’m taking him.”

  I knew she was right, so I didn’t argue. I sat next to the Colonel, who was lying back, with his eyes closed; his dog, Barker, was in the front, resting his head on the seat behind him, and I swear that on the entire journey that extraordinary dog never once took his eyes off his master.

  Ellie is a good—and a fast—driver. We sped back up that endless winding drive—and then something curious happened. As soon as we were on the road again, the old man seemed to revive. First, his right hand stole out, and grasped my arm; then, gradually, the color came back into his face and he opened his eyes and looked around him. I could see he was trying to speak, and I tried to quieten him, to tell him to rest. I don’t know whether he heard or understood me.

  I looked at his bright blue eyes, and I thought of these past months, and the games of cat and mouse he’s played with me. I thought of all the times when I’ve been infuriated and exasperated by him, when I’ve gone away cursing him for his tetchiness, his wiliness, and his recalcitrance.

  None of it mattered. Not one jot. Did I care, in that moment, that he was one of the most difficult, prejudiced, manipulative old buggers I’d ever encountered? No, I didn’t. I liked him. In that moment, I more than liked him. I wanted him to live—and the sudden intensity of that wish took me by surprise. I never had a father (Nicky claims that’s why I’m not just a bastard, but, as he cheerfully puts it, “a cold-blooded bastard”), but in that moment I think I knew how it felt to be a son. I felt a rush of emotion so conflicting and so unexpected that I had to look away—and, desperately ill though he was, I think the old man knew. He started pulling at my arm and I finally made out what he was saying. He was calling me by his dead son’s name: “Thank you,” he said. “Thank you, Jonathan.”

  (BRIEF PAUSE HERE; ONE OF THE SHUTTERS HAD COME loose in the wind; I had to get up and fasten it.) I’ll continue. There was one last scene to be played out before I left The Pines, and, reexamining it now, in retrospect, I’m certain Colonel Julyan had planned it. He’d pretended to believe that diagnosis of a “faint” for Ellie’s sake, but I’m sure he knew it was nonsense. He knew, just as surely as if the doctor had told him, that the next forty-eight hours were critical, and he might not survive the night. And ill as he was, he was determined, determined, not to sleep until he’d spoken to me. Come what may, he was not going to let me leave that house until the ritual he had in mind was effected.

  The doctor had given him enough medication to “fell an ox,” as he put it. It had no effect whatsoever—far from being felled, the Colonel carried on as if he’d swallowed a handful of pep pills. Ellie and I managed to get him into bed, whereupon the Colonel, whose power of speech was improving by the second, ordered her out of the room. Ellie hesitated; the doctor had said that it was imperative to avoid the least agitation. Since nothing agitates the Colonel quite as much as not getting his own way, Ellie didn’t hesitate very long. She left us.

  “Sit there, Gray,” said the Colonel, pointing to a chair. “Sit there and listen.”

  I sat. The curtains had been left a little drawn back, as he likes. The window was a fraction ajar. The ancient gas fire was lit, and was faintly sputtering. Barker, a dog midway between a bear and a sheep, a sort of brown ambulatory hearth rug, was sitting at my feet, regarding me soulfully. Through the crack in the window, I could just hear the sound of the sea, whispering, whispering. Out there in the dark, across the bay, lay Manderley, and a mile or so beyond it, the small gray Saxon church where Rebecca lies buried. I knew the Colonel had loved her once—I think I knew that very, very early. I could see it there in his eyes, almost from our first conversation. I’m certain that love was unexpressed and unrequited—and all the more powerful for that. The emotions we never admit to, never confess, are, as I’ve learned to my own cost, always the most powerful, and sometimes the most enduring.

  I looked at the old man, who might or might not survive the night. He was wearing striped flannel pyjamas; his white hair was standing up in a tufty aureole; his nose—of which he is vain, it is a “Julyan nose,” and in his view it is “hawklike”—was jutting at me. His thick brows were drawn together in a frown, and those bright, sharp blue eyes of his were fixed on mine. He was impressive, absurd, and poignant. I wondered what was coming: revelation at last, or more of his crafty, careful mix of truth, evasion, and mendacity?

  It was some while before he spoke, and as I waited I had a vision of myself at some point in the future, still waiting for this exasperating old man to decide he trusted me. Survive the night? This man has unnatural resilience and willpower. I had a sudden image of the wily old bird hanging on for another two decades, and still keeping me in suspense. I eyed him with a certain amusement, with the respect of one adversary for another, and with affection—a deep affection. Then, to my great surprise, the Colonel began speaking.

  Some of what he said was wild, and irrational—I didn’t believe for a moment that he had actually seen anyone inside that boathouse, for instance, though he insisted he had, and blamed that for his “faint.” But, as he continued, his voice becoming stronger, and his diction miraculously clearer, I began to see where this conversation was leading. I’d been outflanked again. The crafty old soldier had nipped around my defenses and cut off my retreat; he had made me like him, he had made me surrender—and I know he sensed that.

  Apparently, he had also decided he liked me. Apparently, I had passed the “tests” he had set me that day (these tests, I suspect, involved my table manners at lunch, as well as my conduct while at “Castle Perilous,” or Manderley). Apparently he believed I’d saved his life—he certainly said so, which gave him the opportunity for more shameless emotional blackmail. For all these reasons, he went on—and it was the more urgent in that he might “turn up his toes at any moment”—the time had come for us to make a solemn pact. We were to unite our forces. No more fencing around. He’d talk, in other words, if I did.

  I might have known there would be conditions. But that was all right; much of what I know I was happy to tell him—and I’d have done so long ago, had he ever asked me. Obviously it would have been difficult had his questions become more personal: I wouldn’t have welcomed cross-examination on the subject of Mr. Terence Gray’s past, or “Auntie May,” and so on. Fortunately, there were no questions of that kind. We stayed firmly on the subject of Manderley, Rebecca, and the de Winters.

  We didn’t talk for that long. I was anxious not to agitate him, and I knew he should sleep—but I also knew that he would not rest, he would refuse to rest, until this matter was settled.

  After about twenty minutes, I rose to leave. I told him that I would put off my visit to London and my interview with Favell for three or four days—until I was certain he was on the mend. I’m not sure he took in this suggestion, or even heard it. He was struggling to sit up in bed again, Barker was circling back and forth anxiously, and I found that—before I left—there was one last element to this ritual: Would I fetch that key on his chest of drawers, and the black notebook he’d asked Ellie to bring up, which was lying next to it?

  I did so, and I was astonished. All day the Colonel had been concerned about a package in a brown envelope he’
d received that morning; it had been sent anonymously, I now discovered. This notebook had been inside it, and this notebook had been Rebecca’s. For the first time, I was holding in my hands something that had belonged to her. After all these months of searching, the emotion I felt was very strong—I was struggling to conceal it. My hands were unsteady. On the first page, there was a photograph of her as a child, wearing a strange costume. On the last page (I could see the marks where it had been pasted in, but it had come loose) was a picture postcard of Manderley. This was the notebook’s alpha and omega. Apart from its title page, the notebook was empty.

  The title page contained just two words: Rebecca’s Tale, written in what the Colonel was sure was her hand. The child in the photograph was approximately eight or nine, but the handwriting was that of someone older—a girl of about twelve, I’d have said, but that was guesswork. The final “e” of the word “Tale” curled all the way down the page in a childish punning flourish.

  Had she intended, as a child, to write a story, maybe her life story? If so, she’d abandoned the attempt, for the rest of the book was empty; I went through it carefully, in case there was anything the Colonel had missed; but, no, all the other pages were blank. I thought of the scene in Twelfth Night, when Orsino asks Viola-Cesario what happened to the woman whose story she’s been telling him and Viola replies, “A blank, my lord. She never told her love…” I forget the rest of the quotation.

  A blank, my lord. To hold this in my hand—to be given so much, and so little simultaneously: it was deeply frustrating. I kept turning the pages, telling myself there must be something, a single word, a note—but there was nothing. The child’s photograph looked as if it had been taken professionally, and, even this young, the eyes of the child were unmistakable—I’d have known them anywhere. The postcard, in sepia, had nothing written on it, and no printed information beyond the identification of the house, and the name of the photographer, with a studio address in Plymouth. It may be possible, armed with this information, to date the card more precisely; meanwhile, I could date both pictures roughly: 1907 to 1915, I’d have said. Rebecca as a child—and Manderley. My mind began racing—did that mean, could it possibly mean, that Rebecca had known Manderley long before she went there as Maxim’s wife? Did it mean that her connection with that house began far earlier than I, or anyone else, had suspected?

  I wasn’t allowed to take this evidence away. The Colonel would not be parted from it. I persuaded him to let me keep the picture postcard, and it’s here on my desk, but I had to give the notebook back, which I did with the greatest reluctance. Then the key—and it was the famous key to the Manderley gates, about which he is so secretive—was pressed into my hands. It was mine now.

  I don’t, of course, need this key. There are routes into Manderley other than those gates, and, unbeknownst to the Colonel, I’ve been taking advantage of them for some while. But I was deeply touched, all the same. That was when I began to understand the true nature of this ritual. The Colonel may choose to present himself as a stereotypic bluff old military buffer, but I saw through this disguise months ago: Arthur Lancelot Julyan is a romantic. You can see that straight away if you look at his bookshelves. He’s never shaken off the influence of his favorite Malory, and now, drawing himself up, fixing me with a stern eye, the old soldier, the old knight at arms, sent me off to complete the quest he’d left unfinished. Now I must discover the truth—I had to provide at last the answer to the question that, as he finally admitted, had troubled him so long: Who are you, Rebecca?

  Was he consciously echoing Malory’s Le Morte d’Arthur, in which the quest for the grail passes from Lancelot to his son, Galahad? I’ve been re-reading Malory, in an effort to understand the Colonel better—and I thought it was possible. That touched me—and saddened me. Galahad was conspicuously pure—which rules me out for the role. The Colonel bears more resemblance to Don Quixote than he does to Lancelot. And as for the quest…had it never occurred to Colonel Julyan that he might well prefer never to hear the “truth” about Rebecca?

  He believes in “his” Rebecca; tonight he seemed certain that he knew most of her story (that I doubt), and that if we managed to discover “the few scraps” of information still eluding him, they would exonerate her. Any new information we obtained would give the lie, finally, to those in this neighborhood who claim that she was manipulative, faithless, and unprincipled. But will that be the case? I was by no means as sure as the Colonel seemed to be. But then I can be objective, and the Colonel cannot. I felt anxious for him. The last thing I would ever want to do is bring him information that hurt him.

  I said nothing of this, obviously. There were a thousand questions I wanted to ask him, but they would have to wait until he was stronger. The Colonel, seeming to tire at last, settled himself for sleep. Barker curled up by his bedside. I went downstairs and talked to Ellie for several hours; we ate supper together.

  Afterward, I went for that long walk, turning all these things over in my mind. I was excited by what the Colonel had shown me, anxious for him, and deeply troubled. I begin to see that it isn’t possible, as I’d believed, simply to come to a place, make one’s inquiries, and leave. Day by day, I get drawn closer; it is becoming harder and harder to be an impartial observer and investigator. I have made friends here, which I never intended to do. To deceive an interviewee, a provider of information, is not particularly pleasant, though I’ve found I can do it without great difficulty. But to deceive and misrepresent myself to people I have come to care about, to the Colonel above all, but also to Ellie and the Briggs sisters, all of whom have shown me great kindness, that is despicable. I dislike the process, and myself, accordingly.

  (ANOTHER PAUSE; IT’S NOW RAINING HEAVILY AND THE wind has strengthened; that damn shutter is still loose. I’ll have to fix it properly in the morning.) I’m tired. I’ll take myself off to bed, and worry about this tomorrow. Meanwhile I must think. What are the implications of the two photographs in the notebook I saw? Who could have sent it? Is it feasible that there is another Rebecca notebook, as the Colonel claimed to me tonight? Could it conceivably still exist? And, if it does, how do I get my hands on it?

  There is a great deal I must do: I have innumerable personal letters to write, since unfortunately I can’t put my own life on hold to quite the degree I’d hoped. As regards my task here, I must track down that Danvers woman, though it’s proving very difficult—I’m hoping Favell will know where she is. I need to talk to Frith again: I still want to ask him about Lionel de Winter’s womanizing, and his death. I must write again to Frank Crawley, who is being politely but firmly uncooperative, and I need someone to check out those Brittany details for me. I wonder if Nicky would be a good choice? He’s in Paris now, so it would be easy for him to go down there, and it’s the kind of exploit he might like.

  Meanwhile, as I’ll have to be here for the next few days, I must make use of the time. Apart from Frith, I might have another go at the Briggs sisters (I’ve got them to the point where they’re eating out of my hands), and also James Tabb, the former boat builder who converted Je Reviens for Rebecca. Tabb, unlike the Briggs sisters, isn’t tamed yet—the man will not be persuaded to talk to me.

  And then there’s my promise to the Colonel: Maybe I’ll walk over to Manderley and take a look at that boathouse some time. But I’d better be discreet. One of the chief difficulties here, as I’m beginning to understand, is that one is always watched. I’ve never been in a place so well stocked with binoculars. Every boat, every cottage, every walker comes equipped with them. Under the pretext of watching boats or birds, even little old ladies become the most shameless spies—no wonder the Kerrith bush-telegraph is the most effective I’ve ever encountered.

  I don’t want my activities to attract attention. So, if I do go over to the boathouse, I’d better choose my time carefully. Sunday morning would be good—around dawn, preferably.

  ELEVEN

  April 16—Sunday

  I SET THE ALA
RM FOR FIVE A.M., BUT WOKE AT FOUR-thirty—I’ve been sleeping badly. As washing facilities at my cottage are primitive, I go for a quick dip most mornings. Today I decided to swim out to the Kerrith point before setting off for Manderley; it isn’t far, and I thought it might clear my head of the dreams I’d had, though it was still dark and the water was scarcely inviting.

  The sea was black, flat calm, and icy. Depending on the state of the tide, the currents here can be dangerous—there’s a strong undertow, especially if you venture out toward the Manderley headland. Even on the Kerrith side of my cove, the tidal pull can be very strong, but I’d timed the swim well and had no difficulties. I went only as far as the buoy that marks the entrance to the harbor. I hauled myself up onto the flat rocks at the end of the point, and rested there for a few minutes. I had a clear view of the narrow tongue of land where The Pines is situated; there wasn’t a light to be seen in Kerrith, but, silhouetted against the lightening sky, I could see the eccentric turreted Victorian romance that is the Colonel’s house, and a light was burning there. I knew it wasn’t the Colonel’s room, so it must have been Ellie’s.

  So she must be wakeful, even though the Colonel, confounding the doctor, seems stronger by the day. I’ve been calling in every morning to check on his welfare, and although he’s still too weak for long conversations, he’s already begun directing operations. He enjoys ordering me about to such a degree that I feel he’s certain to make a full recovery. It seems tactful not to say this.